To significantly reduce today’s severe congestion and prepare for growth expected by 2030, Montana needs just 31 new lane-miles at a total cost of $57 million, in today’s dollars. That’s a cost of approximately $8 per resident each year. Montana ranks 50th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of most lane-miles needed and 49th in the total costs of those improvements. If the state made these improvements, it would save almost 708 thousand hours per year that are now wasted in traffic jams.As Table 32 suggests, Montana really does not have a significant traffic congestion problem, although there are likely to be specific sites in the state where traffic does have some major adverse impacts. The three cities in Montana with populations over 50,000, Billings, Missoula, and Great Falls, have Travel Time Indices (TTIs) of 1.04. This means that driving times during peak traffic hours are 4 percent longer than during off-peak times. While this TTI does not reach the 1.18 level that this study identifies as severe congestion, the relative increase in delay projected over the next 25 years is 100—125 percent, which will be sharply noticed by local commuters. (The ‘delay’ in the travel time is that portion of the TTI over 1.0.) To put things into perspective, TTIs of around 1.08 reflect current traffic in much larger cities such as Cleveland, Richmond-Petersburg, and Spokane. Montana could solve this limited problem by adding just 31 new lane-miles by 2030 at an estimated cost of $57 million in today’s dollars.

This investment would save an estimated 708 thousand hours per year that are now lost sitting in traffic, at a yearly cost of $3.21 per delay-hour saved. This does not account for the additional benefits not quantified in this study, including: lower fuel use, reduced accident rates and vehicle operating costs, lower shipping costs and truck travel time reductions, greater freight reliability, and a number of benefits associated with greater community accessibility, including an expanded labor pool for employers and new job choices for workers.